Top 55 Quotes & Sayings by Edith Stein

The community that stands behind a culture as a comprehensively productive personality must be so extensive that in it, to a certain degree, all partialities balance out and work together.

One could say that in case of need, every normal and healthy woman is able to hold a position. And there is no profession which cannot be practiced by a woman.

Since Mary is the prototype of pure womanhood, the imitation of Mary must be the goal of girls' education.

As the possessor of complete knowledge, God is not mistaken about people's experiences as people are mistaken about each others' experiences.

My longing for truth was a single prayer.

This is a serious warning cry: Surrender without reservation to the Lord who has called us. This is required of us so that the face of the earth may be renewed.

The state has got to be its own master. The modalities of civic life may not be prescribed for it through any power standing outside of that state - be it a private person or be it a community superior, collateral, or subordinate to that state.

The emotions have been seen as the center of woman's soul. For that reason, emotional formation will have to be centrally placed in woman's formation.

All our own present experiences are primordial. What could be more primordial than experience itself?

The limitless loving devotion to God, and the gift God makes of Himself to you, are the highest elevation of which the heart is capable; it is the highest degree of prayer. The souls that have reached this point are truly the heart of the Church.

In order to be an image of God, the spirit must turn to what is eternal, hold it in spirit, keep it in memory, and by loving it, embrace it in the will.

The entire educational process must be carried out with love, which is perceptible in every disciplinary measure and which does not instill any fear. And the most effective educational method is not the word of instruction but the living example without which all words remain useless.

A community having the breadth and scope of a people still cannot claim to be an ethnic community unless and until there emerges from its mentality a distinctive culture particularized by the community's special character.

Diverse forms of memory can have a variety of gaps. Thus it is possible for me to represent a past situation to myself and be unable to remember my inner behavior in this situation. As I transfer myself back into this situation, a surrogate for the missing memory comes into focus.

Both spiritual companionship and spiritual motherliness are not limited to the physical wife and mother relationship, but they extend to all people with whom woman comes into contact.

Peoplehood tends to develop into nationhood if the people achieves a certain maturity. This is analogous to an individual person who becomes acquainted with herself only in the course of her life, without being able to say that she possessed no personal uniqueness at all before that 'self-recognition.'

Those who join the Carmelite Order are not lost to their near and dear ones, but have been won for them, because it is our vocation to intercede to God for everyone.

Whoever resorts regularly to the lessons of Holy Scripture as an apt pupil will take the Savior into her group, and the children will perceive that He is present and that He assists in their work; thus, He will take possession of their souls.

As for what concerns our relations with our fellow men, the anguish in our neighbor's soul must break all precept. All that we do is a means to an end, but love is an end in itself, because God is love.

The nation... doesn't simply need what we have. It needs what we are.

Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul 'prays in us with unspeakable groanings'.

If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him.

During my early years, I was mercurially lively, always in motion, spilling over with pranks, impertinent and precocious, and, at the same time, intractably stubborn and angry if anything went against my will.

On the question of relating to our fellowman - our neighbor's spiritual need transcends every commandment. Everything else we do is a means to an end. But love is an end already, since God is love.

Because human development is the most specific and exalted mission of woman, studies in anthropology and theory of pedagogy are essential in girls' education.

I had given up practising my Jewish religion when I was a 14-year-old girl and did not begin to feel Jewish again until I had returned to God.

When you seek truth, you seek God whether you know it or not.

There is no profession which cannot be practiced by a woman.

Let go of your plans. The first hour of your morning belongs to God. Tackle the day's work that he charges you with, and he will give you the power to accomplish it.

Who can sleep on the night that God became man?

We will always find fundamentally the compulsion to become what the soul should be.

Everywhere the need exists for maternal sympathy and help.

Anyone who seeks truth seeks God, whether or not he realizes it.

If you learn from Saint Thérèse to depend on God alone and serve him with a wholly pure and detached heart, then you can join with your whole soul in singing the jubilant song of the holy Virgin, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” And like little St. Thérèse you will be able to say at the end, “I do not regret that I have given myself to love.”

Those who remain silent are responsible.

Everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete. Everything inanimate finally serves the living. That is why every activity dealing in abstraction stands in ultimate service to a living whole.

The soul of woman must be expansive and open to all human beings, it must be quiet so that no small weak flame will be extinguished by stormy winds; warm so as not to benumb fragile buds... empty of itself, in order that extraneous life may have room in it; finally, mistress of itself and also of its body, so that the entire person is readily at the disposal of every call.

An 'I' without a body is a possibility. But a body without an 'I' is utterly impossible.

Usually one gets a heavier cross when one attempts to get rid of an old one.

Do not accept anything as love which lacks truth.

One cannot desire freedom from the Cross when one is especially chosen for the Cross.

The world doesn't need what women have, it needs what women are.

Woman naturally seeks to embrace that which is living, personal, and whole. To cherish, guard, protect, nourish and advance growth is her natural, maternal yearning.

Each woman who lives in the light of eternity can fulfill her vocation, no matter if it is in marriage, in a religious order, or in a worldly profession.

Each finite creature can reflect only a fraction of the divine nature; thus, in the diversity of His creatures, God's infinity, unity and oneness appear to be broken into an effulfgence of manifold rays.

The woman's soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold.

The nation doesn't simply need what we have. It needs what we are.

the deeper one is drawn into God, the more one must 'go out of oneself'; that is, one must go to the world in order to carry the divine life into it.

Energy apparently increases with the amount of work to be done. When nothing of burning urgency is waiting, it decreases much sooner. Heaven seems to understand such economy.

Just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God's hands and leave it with Him.

And when night comes, and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God's hands and leave it with Him.

The Bread that we need each day to grow in eternal life, makes of our will a docile instrument of the Divine Will; sets the Kingdom of God within us; gives us pure lips, and a pure heart with which to glorify his holy name

We can do nothing ourselves; God must do it. To speak to Him thus is easier by nature for woman than for man because a natural desire lives in her to give herself completely to someone.

Woman's soul is present and lives more intensely in all parts of the body, and it is inwardly affected by that which happens to the body; whereas, with men, the body has more pronoucedly the character of an instrument which serves them in their work and which is accompanied by a certain detachment.

The motive, principle, and end of the religious life is to make an absolute gift of self to God in a self-forgetting love, to end one's own life in order to make room for God's life.